{"id":275,"date":"2022-04-27T20:04:40","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T20:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/startups\/blog\/?p=275"},"modified":"2024-10-15T01:18:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T09:18:04","slug":"holly-cardew-carted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/startups\/blog\/holly-cardew-carted\/","title":{"rendered":"Building and managing remote-first teams \u2013 Holly Cardew, founder and CEO of Carted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Today\u2019s guest post features an interview between Colin Kinner, founder and CEO of Startup Onramp<\/a> in Brisbane, Australia and Holly Cardew, founder and CEO of Carted<\/a> in Sydney, Australia.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Colin<\/strong>: Holly, you\u2019ve been building businesses for more than a decade now. We\u2019ve spoken before about your approach to building remote-first or distributed teams, and it\u2019s great to have this chance to sit down and pick your brains about why this has worked so well for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d like to start by asking you why you\u2019ve gravitated to this way of thinking about teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holly<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been a remote-first evangelist ever since I first started building businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I started out it was rare that companies would be thinking about fully distributed teams from day one. For me, it was an incredible opportunity\u2014and competitive advantage\u2014to hire exceptional talent from anywhere in the world. I wasn\u2019t constrained by location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, we have 19 people in the Carted team, located in nine different cities spanning Europe, UK, North America, India, and Australia. By the end of this year, we\u2019re expecting the team will have grown well beyond this size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, remote work has allowed us to hire a more diverse workforce and allows our team to have better work\/life balance. For Carted this has translated to better retention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, the world has changed a lot over the last decade. Now the focus is less on whether distributed teams can be as successful; we know the answer is yes. We\u2019re more concerned with how to manage those teams, both in the context of work output and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colin<\/strong>: We\u2019re seeing more companies embracing remote-first. But there isn\u2019t much discussion about the practicalities of making this work, especially as the team grows. Can you share some of the strategies you\u2019ve used at Carted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holly<\/strong>: The first priority has to be communication. You have to embed clear communication into all workflows. You also have to work hard to build culture. There are inherently fewer organic moments of connection in a remote team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Carted we\u2019ve put people and culture first. One of my first hires at Carted was a Head of People. This was non-negotiable for me in helping to set up best-practice for our team building and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also think you need to err on the side of over-communicating. We\u2019re often working asynchronously, so we communicate regularly and try to build deeper connection points wherever possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Internal communication doesn\u2019t have to be just about work, so we make sure to have some fun and laughs along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, there are some downsides to building a remote team. It\u2019s much harder to create social opportunities with the team, and tougher to build connections that aren’t focused solely on the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It hasn\u2019t been easy to schedule real-time interactions due to the lack of crossover time between all the continents, especially as the team has grown. But it\u2019s important and we schedule a few regular meetings for the team to be able to overlap in real-time, such as our companywide stand-up every Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colin<\/strong>: What about hiring? Are there certain types of people who work better in a remote-first environment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holly<\/strong>: We\u2019ve learned that it helps to hire people who have worked remotely before, or who are happy to work from home without being in an office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n My advice to other founders is to try to hire functional teams who will work in a similar time zone, or at least in locations where there is overlap. For example, we have a lot of our engineers in Europe and that works well for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colin<\/strong>: What about culture? Is it harder to build a healthy company culture in remote teams? How have you gone about this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holly<\/strong>: We\u2019ve built our culture around the idea of looking out for our Carters at each stage of their employee journey. As a distributed team it\u2019s fundamental that we have practices in place to fill the gaps in what would normally be done via in-person experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, we routinely record team meetings so anyone who can\u2019t attend can watch later. This avoids anyone feeling excluded because of their location or personal commitments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also like to build and communicate openly and avoid private messaging or small group chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colin<\/strong>: Is there any part of building a team that has to be done in-person?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holly<\/strong>: What\u2019s worked well for us is to create opportunities to connect in real life. We\u2019ve committed to doing this on a regular basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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